Yep. In fact, I’ve been doing it for a couple years.
Very carefully.
And you learn to ask for help whenever you can get it.
This business of using color TVs, refrigerators and air conditioning as a metric for poverty is very simply another aspect of the Republican drive to destroy the middle class and turn American into just another Third World banana republic ruled by wealthy white oligarchs. The basic thought is, until American poverty is EXACTLY LIKE third world poverty, it isn’t really poverty, see? So we have no need to address poverty until we are stepping over the bodies of people dying in the streets.
Classy people, our conservative brethren.
I can and am. I’m going through gradschool at the moment, and PPP-wise, I live on about 800USD a month.
It’s easy enough when you find the cheapest place to rent, but you have almost no disposable income.
That statement presupposes that the poor have always been poor, and in fact that is not always the case. Someone living on less than $1k a month might have been middle class in the past. So, several years prior they might well have purchased TVs, and air conditioner, cell phone, expensive clothes, etc. which they still own. After all, it’s not like the Poverty Police come into their homes and confiscate their nice stuff, right? If they can get their housing down under $1k a month, and get foodstamps, they can probably exist for quite some time while retaining some of the material goods they acquired in better times.
There is so much focus on so-called “generational poverty” that transient poverty is almost entirely ignored.
I wasn’t dirt poor but I didn’t have much. My father died when I was young and my mother is a basket case. She has mental issues. But I managed to pull myself together and pay my own way through college and until last month was doing well. Of course it’s all falling apart rather quickly, which I guess is a lesson in humility. But some of my friends in the same situation as I was, simply didn’t have it in them to pull themselves up.
And I’m not knocking them. It’s like people who simply can’t bring themselves to speak in public or can’t bring themselves to fly on an airplane. A lot of time being poor is about luck.
If you really think about it, being successful often is nothing more than having the financial or personal resouces to overcome your bad decisons in life.
I’m a nurse in a hospital and I make a comfortable living. The unit secretaries, housekeepers and nurses aids who are much less educated are salary capped to a little over 10.00 an hour. I love my ancillary staff and my job would be infinitely harder without them.
I feel bad that my best unit secretary who has worked there much longer than my 14 years has nothing to aspire to, salary-wise, in her position. Even without furthering her education, I feel like she should get some credit for years of valuable service.
When we lose these employees (and we lost a few recently when a new, competing, facility opened… with higher starting salaries) we lose so much that is just not measurable- an institutional memory of how things are done, a person who had facility wide connections and could get the missing thing that I or my patients need, etc. Eventually, I suspect the loss of solid, long-term but not well compensated employees will show up on the financial bottom lines when quality of care declines.
Our CEO makes something around six million- it may be 8 million. I don’t know if he deserves that or not. I do know I overheard one of our CEO’s complaining the other day about a dirty area outside the hospital during an inspection. It’s a covered area where patients and visitors hang out. It used to get power washed occasionally but no one has come to do that for a very long time. I have complained 3 times about this area being dirty- even the cobwebs have dust on them and the walls are filthy. One visitor sat there spitting loogies on the floor weeks ago and the dried up stains are still in front of the bench where he sat. Anything spilled there this summer is still there since we are in a drought and no rain has washed the dirt away.
When the CEO walked by, I heard him say “They work here for 12 hours a day but won’t take ownership of the place” and wondered what he expected me to do about that dirt. I wondered why he thought a salary capped employee who earns less than the federal poverty level should feel like she owns the place. I don’t have a broom or a power washer in my pocket, so I can’t clean these outside walls. And, does he really want his higher paid employees spending their time on housekeeping duties?
I wondered if he gave up $25,000 of his pay and hired a $20,000 dollar housekeeper and provided him or her with $5,000 work of health insurance, if that area would suddenly get clean.
Every year, I give my Holiday Bonus Card (a whopping $25.00 grocery gift card) to my secretary and very gently encourage others to do so if they feel so inclined. But, we didn’t get gift cards these last two years because, ya know, the economy is bad.
Assuming that was a work-related injury, you probably shouldn’t be left in the cold like that- I’d think most states would require your employer to make up some portion of the income you’d have made if you continued working there, assuming you’re injured enough, and you didn’t do something stupid/negligent to cause your incident.
Did anyone else read that?
“Being poor is knowing you really shouldn’t spend that buck on a Lotto ticket.”
But then doing it anyways, to the tune of 9% of their income.
*"Being poor is making sure you don’t spill on the couch, just in case you have to give it back before the **lease *is up."
Why do people still lease/rent a couch? I encourage everyone to go to a rent-a-place and check out the prices as well as conditions for renting furniture and tvs. Yet despite not having enough money to pay for utilities, they managed to pay rental fees for the tv that’s on all day.
“Being poor is a $200 paycheck advance from a company that takes $250 when the paycheck comes in.”
It’s no wonder the pay day stores showed up on every block. That $50 should have been seen as more important than the rented tv (or lottery tickets). On top of that, you can roll over that loan for another $50, again and again, until you’ve paid thousands for a $200 loan. But $50 seems cheap compared to $200.
“Being poor is four years of night classes for an Associates of Art degree.”
Instead of two years to learn a skilled trade.
“Being poor is picking the 10 cent ramen instead of the 12 cent ramen because that’s two extra packages for every dollar.”
Eating food completely devoid of nutritional content because you think ramen noodles are “cheap.” Take the 10 cents, plus the $7 worth of lottery tickets, and the $50 paid to the loan company, and by small amounts of nutritious food, which will help that cough go away (wouldn’t hurt to stop smoking too).
Most important point in that list though, which needs to be remembered: “Being poor is learning to live with condemned-quality housing because coming up with the first and last month’s rent, plus utility deposits, you’d need to move is a pipe dream.”
A lot of people living in poverty pay a weekly rate, which is always higher than a monthly rate, which is again higher than a yearly rate, which is higher than owning. But by never being able to save enough for that down payment, they’ll continue to lose money.
I don’t know if it’s fair to include kids in that list. While you might argue that people shouldn’t have kids they can’t afford to look after, that doesn’t account for people who fall on hard times later on, and in any case, it’s not like the other factors; you can give up tobacco (it’s hard, but it can be done) but you can’t give up feeding your kids.
Booze can be a vicious cycle - being poor gets you down, so you have a drink, which means you have less money, etc etc. And of course it costs you the same as it does very rich people, hence the percentages being higher even though the actual amounts spent might be less. That’s probably sensible - these are non-essentials, after all - but it makes it easier to understand why someone might not notice how much of their income they’re spending, if they drift in and out of poverty and have better-off friends.
The maths is a bit wrong on that otherwise-interesting lottery article, btw; $645 is not 9% of $13,000. Poor people, IME, are more likely to buy lottery tickets, but I’m sceptical about it being 9% of their income.
Addiction definitely is one of the causes for some people being so poor.
Why do you think that?
Why do you think there is any obligation on the part of the (former) employer to “make up some portion of the income”?
As far as I know there isn’t - unless the employer has disability insurance on the employee, which is exceedingly rare, and even then there’s usually a point at which it cuts off. If the employer is found negligent then there might be a court case and settlement, but otherwise no. Disabled employees are usually terminated as quickly as legally possible, essentially dumped on the Federal social security for disability system.
I don’t think that’s supposed to be a list of why it’s someone’s fault they are poor, just a reason. And there’s no doubt that kids can make it much harder to escape poverty: it’s not just that they have to be fed (and watched!), it’s that they close off certain career options (such as the military) and make others much less attractive (such as working a second job nights, or going to school full time at night). They make it very hard to save money. They take a lot of energy.
There are about 9.000 unemployed engineers in The Detroit area. These are people with education and talent. Our manufacturing has disappeared with tool designers, assemblers, machinists and management with it. IT had practically evaporated as it was transferred to India and then China.
Factory workers used to make a decent wage in the auto support industry. Their wages have been cut in half. Benefits have been slashed or eliminated.
Yep, if they hadn’t bought lottery tickets and smoked, all would be well. If they didn’t waste their money buying homes and cars, they wouldn’t have been repossessed. It they didn’t have kids, they would not have that extra expense.
Some of you guys are condescending jerks.
What do you suggest as an alternative? They live entirely without furniture? They buy something broken down at a second-hand store that might be pre-infested with bedbugs or cockroaches? Pull furniture out of their neighbors’ trash?
And you leap from “couch” to TV for no discernible reason. But let’s look at the TV anyway - it may be the only source of entertainment and news for the family. Perhaps they should sit in their empty rooms staring at the walls, completely uninformed as to current events?
Of course there are extremes on both ends, but seriously, having a TV isn’t that outlandish these days.
Well, it’s a problem when you have to pay a bill RIGHT NOW and have no credit, isn’t it? Should you just live without heat in the middle of winter for a week until you get your paycheck? Of course, then you have the problem that utility companies will often charge “re-connection fee” in the hundreds of dollars.
A lot of banks won’t deal with the poor, instituting minimum balances or significant monthly fees. A lot of poor people have horrible credit. Simply returning your “rented TV” won’t get you the $50 (or whatever) you need RIGHT NOW.
When the poor come up short, do they have an alternative?
When I was middle class I could get credit cards, cash advances, a line of credit from my credit union and another from my bank, but now… no one at all will lend me money. So if I come up short, what should I do? Seriously - point me to the alternatives.
What “skilled trade” makes you employment-ready for something at a wage above poverty in two years?
Maybe 10 years ago you could get decent wages as an apprentice, and union wages by the hour look good, but right now in my area I know tradesmen with 20 years experience who can’t find work and who are standing in line at the local public aid office right alongside me.
Again - there is so much preoccupation with “generational welfare” that people aren’t seeing that there are millions of skilled, educated people in this country who CAN NOT FIND WORK because THERE ARE NO JOBS in their field. It has nothing to do with rented TVs :rolleyes:, lottery tickets, or payday loans. They’re poor now because they can not find a job. For these people it’s all about lack of employment.
What do you do when there are no grocery stores in your neighborhood? Then you have to pay to travel to get that hypothetical nutritious food. Then you have to fill your belly. Sure, an orange is better than a packet of ramen noodles, but an orange costs 6-10 times as much around here and just one does not make a meal. Ramen fills you up. You ignore that after you pay the rent, utilities, gas, etc. you may be looking at only a few dollars to live on for the week, in which case you might be able to buy a 3 pound bag of oranges, which will not last you the week, or a case of ramen noodles that will at least provide enough calories to keep you going.
No, long term ramen noodles aren’t cheap from a health standpoint, but until this nation ensures people actually DO have access to healthy food, and are able to purchase said healthy food, poor people will continue to eat shit because that’s all they can get their hands on.
Case in point - last year at one point I had to go to a food pantry. They handed out two cakes, four pastries, two loaves of bread, a can of beans, and for “vegetable” they were handing out 5 green beans (no joke, I counted) and 1 zucchini per family. OK, this is the place you go when you literally have no means to obtain food. WTF were the people thinking when they donated this crap? Are they the same people who then turn around and bitch that the poor don’t eat healthy? Why didn’t the people donating give bread rather than cake and pastries? Why no cans of vegetables or peanut butter or tuna? Why no fruit? Even canned fruit would be an improvement over no fruit at all.
Let’s look at this problem a little differently, shall we?
In my area 1 bedroom apartments run $750 to $900 per month. First + last month rent is $1500 to $1800. Utility deposits from $50 to 200 depending on what utilities and your credit rating. That means you need between $1550 and $2000 over and above your normal living costs in order to get better-than-shit housing.
Here’s the catch - most “welfare” type assistance programs cut off abruptly at between $2000 and 2500 in assets. That includes your car, if you have one. Is your car with, say, $700? Then saving even the lower of those two amounts would boot you off all your supporting programs So if you DID manage to save up sufficient to get into a new apartment, having the cash would kick you off the very assistance programs that are enabling you whatever crap standard of living you are currently “enjoying”. That means losing food stamps, TANF, and whatever else you might be getting. So, fine, you move into that new apartment but what are you going to buy food with now?
So, while you are correct the costs of week to week rental are greater than month-to-month, the way the system is set up poor people can never save up enough to jump that hurdle. If they do, they get the rug pulled out from under them and may wind up in even worse circumstances than if they just paid week-to-week.
Yes, initially it seems fiscally stupid, but the system is set up so that attempts to be fiscally smart, by saving up enough cash to move, penalizes the people the system is supposed to help.
Maybe if we allowed, say $4k in assets prior to dumping people off programs more of them might save, move into better housing, build up reserve and buy a better car so they can go to a real grocery store instead of buying Doritos and ramen at the local liquor store, and so forth. Maybe we should look at the actual effects of the system. Maybe people with skills and education need different help than high school drop outs, but right now everyone is dumped into the same bin.
"More than 40 percent of teenage mothers report living in poverty by age 27. "
Whether or not we can call it a choice, having children is a massive financial burden that will hurt the poor disproportionately more than the rich. As Manda JO pointed out, having children limit options.
Oddly enough, when I said that in a previous thread on exactly this topic, most people told me that children were a blessing and most people considered themselves richer because of their children.
That’s exactly right, you can’t just give up your kids in hard times the way you can eat your horses, which is why having kids puts people at risk of ending up in poverty. Look at that recent class action lawsuit against Walmart, where working mothers claimed Walmart’s policies discriminated against them because they couldn’t move to get a management job.
Avoiding teen pregnancy is the fastest way to avoiding poverty.
Not exactly sure what you mean by that statement. But sure, getting drunk is an easy way to not notice how much you’re spending.
It’s not supposed to be. It’s that people making under $13,000 may spend upwards of 9% of their income on lottery tickets, where the average spent by that group is $645. If you go to that “taxing the poor” article I linked to they have section about gambling, where they show that the few who do gamble spend extremely high amounts.
But consider someone making $11,000 which is the federal poverty level. What would an extra $645 look like to them? Having that money means not having to go to a pay day loan shark to get $200. Or having to rent furniture. Or not paying utility bills.
If you’re skeptical do some reading on the subject.
Taxing the Poor; Section III: Government-Sanctioned Gambling
**Even after the adjustment, households earning just $10,000 spend twice the amount on gambling as households earning $90,000.
*Put another way, the lowest-earning households spend about 10.8 percent of income on gambling, versus 0.7 percent of income for the highest earners. *
My sister in law had worked for a company for 30 years. She was planning on a comfortable retirement ,but the owners of the company invested all the money they could with Madoff. She will have a far poorer retirement now. They barely managed to save the company.
A lot of what happens to American workers is out of their hands.
Do you really want an answer to that? I currently have plenty of furniture I got for free because someone else didn’t want it. But that’s not the issue, it’s a question of how much furniture does someone actually need? Seriously, think about it. Does everyone need a couch? Do they need it so badly that they have to pay an exorbitantly high fee to rent said couch? Would it be impossible to live without a couch for a month until they’ve saved enough to buy one instead of renting?
The reason was that in college, when I shared a small house with 5 other guys, we went to a furniture rental place because we thought we could pool our money and rent a huge tv. I very quickly concluded that the hundreds per month weren’t worth it, I’m disappointed that so many people can’t arrive at the same conclusion.
Right now I’m “renting” a cable modem from Comcast for $5 per month. Seems cheap, but I’ve been renting the damn thing for 6 years, so it’s currently worth $360! The rent-a-couch system is the same thing. $100 per month for a $500 couch instead of waiting 5 months and then buying the couch. That right there, in my opinion, is what keeps the poor in poverty.
I don’t care how you choose to rationalize it to yourself, but your attempts at emotional manipulation doesn’t work on me. Some how you’ve created a situation in which people living in poverty simply HAVE to have a tv. No, they don’t, and they’d be richer without it, or at least better fed, and perhaps more literate.
Yes actually, it is. TVs are a luxury item that some how, in your words, are now necessary. Not just necessary but so needed that people can waste money every month RENTING them.
Have you considered that the reason for the high utility bill, and lack of cash, is the result of the rented tv? Which is the only source of entertainment, so it’s on all day every day.
The re-connection fee is another aspect to how all this plays out. It’s another way in which the poor continue to push themselves into poverty by spending money in one direction, then paying re-connection fees, while taking a huge hit to their credit.
First thing to realize is that utility bills don’t need to be so high, shorter showers, fewer lights left on, and lowering the room temperature can make huge changes. My experience with this has really jaded me to the subject because I’ve seen the power bills for people living in poverty, and it’s always the same thing: someone is home all day, with the lights on, the heat up, and the tv full blast. And the bill can always be reduced if people want to reduce it.
The other thing to realize is that bills need to get paid first (which includes groceries) and THEN things like entertainment, alcohol, tobacco, and lottery tickets get bought. That power bill is going to come every month, and the money needs to be put aside for it every month.
That’s right, and it sucks. But some banks will.
Why is that? Do they start with horrible credit because they’re poor?
No, but not renting the tv in the first place is a good way to have that $50.
Nope.
Don’t rely on credit. I did the same thing years ago, then realize it’s back-ass-wards and a very easy trap to get into. The things you are paying for need to be paid in cash up front. Don’t pretend a power bill happens at the end of the month, when you are actually using that power all month long. They are actually floating you credit by not making you pay up front.
The alternative is to live cheaper which is doable and it means things like not having rooms full of furniture and rented tvs.
Almost all of them.
That’s right, and it could you YOUR area. Other places are looking for employees.
And I know some that can, do we balance out?
Sure, for those people. But the OP asked “How do people end up so poor?” and the list you rolled your eyes at plays a huge part.
For those that did have jobs, all too often it was exactly what you said, they had access to credit cards and home equity lines of credit. They had a negative savings rate during one of the largest periods of economic expansion. They could have saved, they chose not to. They could have paid off their mortgage and car loans, they chose not to.
Me personally, I walked.
No, you don’t have to fill your belly. It might feel good temporarily, but it’s not a necessary requirement.
So don’t buy an orange, buy an apple, or canned fruit. But that’s besides the point, because fruit isn’t the substitute for ramen, rice and beans are. Which end up being cheaper, while having nutritional benefit. Ramen is such a classic mistake that simply causes more problems.
You don’t need to be “filled up.” There is a cost to filling your belly with styrofoam. In Tanzania they eat ugali, which is essentially corn flower cooked into a goo.
Again, you’re wrong, and it highlights the problem with this line of thinking. First you don’t even need a full orange, much less a full bag or oranges. Like I said, the substitution for ramen is rice and beans (or lentils). They will fill you up for a lower cost while providing nutrition.
The US has the cheapest food in the world, it can’t possibly get cheaper. I was poor in Canada where food costs twice as much (including ramen). People in the US eat shit because they choose to eat shit, they don’t know any better, and they’d rather have a tv.
I agree, food pantries have a hard time, but I spent 5 years working with non-profits that fed the poor. We gave out bags of fresh produce that rotted because people didn’t want then or didn’t’ know what to do with them. In the end, we had to give out ramen because it’s what people demand even though it would have been cheaper for us to make soup.
I don’t know what they were thinking. Essentially they had the same crappy access to information as everyone else, or they were just clearing out their cupboards.
Are you suggesting that someone in poverty live in a 1 bedroom apartment? I went from sharing a 6 bedroom house, to a 4 bedroom house, to a 4 bedroom apartment, to a studio, to eventually sharing a 1 bedroom with my wife. My wife has family in India where a 4 people live in a two bedroom apartment.
That’s right, US social services suck. Of all the socialized countries in the world, the US is the worst at it. Not sure why that is.
Yup, a perfect example of what I tried to explain to people a few months ago. Social programs in the US actively keep people poor.
Yup, the system sucks and will continue to get worse. Personally I think they’re still better off saving until they can jump that hurdle.
I tried extremely hard for most of my adult life to help the poor and was spit at in return, literally. I spent 6 months at the Salvation Army trying to improve the food they were serving. I busted my ass and in return people just said, “I want fries, can I have more fries? Where are the fries?” They weren’t interested in better quality food, like you said, they just wanted to be full–of fries. Providing fresh fruit was actually disastrous because they were taking them, and selling them for smokes!
I worked with food pantries trying to fill them with things of quality and people rejected them. They didn’t want canned fruit. I actually had people come back with bags of food saying they’d like to exchange them for better stuff. What they brought back was the cans of tuna, vegetables, fruit, as well as things like oatmeal and rice.
emacknight, I agree with everything you said (except I don’t have as much experience with food kitchens, from either end).
I was very poor at 19, with a child, and know about being poor. I rented nothing but my apartment (which was a cheap basement apartment that flooded even once in while). It included utilities, so that helped, but it was a matter of the units in the building not being on separate meters, so the rent included the utility charges. I owned almost nothing.
But, I did not rent anything either. I literally had no chairs in my living room until I found a matched set of 1970’s orange chairs in someone’s garbage. I was so excited that I rushed to my mom’s house to borrow her bigger car, hurrying in case someone took them before I could!
I shopped at Goodwill for clothing, all of my furniture was free - my bedroom set from my childhood bedroom, a bookshelf from my mom, and my sister’s old TV sat on a coffee table from my mom’s attic. No cable, and my computer was sub-par for the time, which I found in the Bargain Finder. But I paid for it in cash from my tax refund.
I am still teased about the shopping list I was doing at work one day. It said “Meat - $4.00” They thought it was a joke, but no, that was my meat budget for two weeks. We also ate a lot of potatoes, canned vegetables and PB&J.
The two of us lived on $850 a month. And you know what - it wasn’t that bad. I was poor, but I was happy and my kid was fine. I also find it telling that, now that I am married and approaching a family income of six figures, I still have the second hand bookshelf in my attic, and my childhood dresser is in my basement, holding my son’s clothes and household rags. I am amazed that it’s still here - it was purchased in 1993 or so, is one of the “put together” Sauder types of furniture, and has made it from my bedroom, through my daughter’s bedroom (she’s now 15) and is still in use. The TV was passed along to someone else when my husband and I moved in together.
I took no public aid, and have worked very hard to get here.
A few years ago I saw some article about 5 ways to stay out of poverty. I don’t remember the whole thing, I tried googling it without success. But it gave 5 rules, that if one follows, gives an over 95% (or something) chance of not living below the poverty line.
It was something like:
- Don’t drop out of high school
- Don’t get married before you are 20
- Don’t have a child before you are married
…
Does anyone else remember what I’m talking about?
I read that too, and I’m pretty sure the others were:
4. buy proper insurance
5. don’t get sick
No it does not balance out. Skilled trades have an unemployment in the range of 15 percent. When they find jobs, the rates are cut and benefits slashed.
No matter how good a worker you are, when your company shuts, or moves its work offshore, you are screwed. You are not in charge of your whole destiny in the real world. Merely the one your strange right wing one your brain inhabits. But the reality of slashed wages and benefits, with an real unemployment rate near 20 percent, many hard workers with educations are hurting badly. There are thousands of IT guys searching for jobs. Plenty of engineers are out of work. Bank of America is about to jettison 30,000 workers. But you think all they do is walk down the street to new and exciting opportunities that exist only in your mind.